1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to mail processing systems and, more particularly, to a system that is intended to process flat-shaped mail including envelopes, newspapers, catalogs, magazines, and other publications that meet U.S. postal service size and flexibility standards, although this invention equally applies to letter or parcel mail of varying shapes and sizes, by sequencing the mail from random order into a specific delivery point sequence (DPS) order.
2. Description of the Background
There are a number of schemes that mailers can use in preparing bundles of flats mail and each scheme has a mailing cost assigned to it by the U.S. Postal Service. Bundles are created to allow flats that are destined for the same carrier route or zone to be processed together. In a 3-digit scheme, all mail within each bundle must be addressed to a delivery point within a postal zone within a zip code having the same first three digits. In a 5-digit scheme, the zip code must have the same first five digits. In a carrier route scheme, the bundle must only contain mail for a specific carrier who delivers the mail. Each bundling scheme is processed by the USPS differently. As mail carriers receive their flats for the day, some of their mail has already been automatically sequenced into “delivery point sequence” (DPS) order, although a large remainder of their mail is in a random order and requires the mail carrier to manually organize them into the sequence of his/her delivery route. The manual DPS process entails placing each piece of mail into a series of receptacles one each corresponding to each delivery point on the carrier's route. The carrier then removes the mail from the receptacles in the order in which the carrier traverses his mail route, thereby creating a bundle of mail pre-sorted in accordance with DPS order. This way when the carrier arrives at each delivery point on their route they need only remove from the “top” of their bundle. Manual DPS casing is time and labor intensive and error prone.
Over the past 30 years, the Postal Service has purchased equipment and developed strategies to automate the processing of flat mail. In 1999, the Postal Service deployed the first fully automated flat sorting machine, the AFSM 100. The AFSM 100 can process more than 16,000 flats per hour but is only capable of a primary sort that separates the mail by its 5-digit ZIP Code. The mail must be transported to an incoming secondary operation for DPS processing.
The USPS contracted with Northrop Grumman and other vendors to design and construct a flats sequencing system (FSS). The purpose of the FSS was to automate the sequencing of flat mail for the purpose of reducing costs, absorbing growth and stabilizing postage rates. The FSS was introduced in 2008 but has been plagued by problems ever since. The FSS uses a dual pass sort technique. The first pass determines the address information, learns how many letters are to be sent to each delivery point, and starts the sorting process. During the second pass, mail from the original output is resequenced according to DPS. The USPS's $1.4 billion investment in FSS was supposed to revolutionize the labor-intensive process of delivering catalogs, magazines, newspapers, and other flat mail, but the system is still plagued by machine downtime, late deliveries, and other problems.
What is needed is a system capable of serving as a standalone sortation system or retrofit to an existing AFSM-100 sorter that can process mail, either letter or flat, in any generally thin form, from random order to sequenced DPS order, in a single sortation pass.
The present application describes a system capable of processing mail, either letter or flat or small parcels, in any generally thin form, that is in random order and to sequence it into a specific order, in this case that is the order of the delivery stop points of the mail delivery carrier. This system is uniquely different than current systems in that it will process this random mail into a sequence order in a single sortation pass.